Turning Weakness Into Strength

Today, I’m thinking about my great grandmother Dagny and her bravery. 131 years have passed since Dagny set out from Norway to start her life as a missionary in China. It must have taken a lot of guts and stubborness for a woman to travel across the vast oceans on such a dangerous and uncertain mission.

Dagny had struggled for a long time to obtain permission from her parents to travel abroad. Her father argued: “Mother finds the idea of your departure difficult, and as you have always been the weakest of our children, I must say no. Such a task does not suit your physique.”

Dagny was surprised that her parents did not immediately say yes.
“Being old friends of the mission, they would, of course, say yes,” she thought. She had first had a letter from her mother that sounded more positive. Her mother wrote, that at a meeting held by Hudson Taylor* in Oslo, she had promised God one of her children for the mission if He desired to use it.”

But despite this, her parents did not think Dagny was the right person for the challenging task. Instead of applying to be a missionary, Dagny was sent to stay with a sister in Skien. She was 20 years old and inconsolable.

Dagny in the middle, surrounded by her family, before leaving for China.

It took a lot of persuasion from Dagny to finally convince her parents to let her go. On October 7, 1892, the long awaited day had finally come. Dagny’s father, mother, siblings, and hundreds of people stood on the quay, waving goodbye to the brave travelers. Dagny’s mother couldn’t speak out of emotion; she just held Dagny in her arms. Later, in her cabin, Dagny found that her mother had written in her Bible, “My Dagny, your motto shall be: ‘Jesus is.'” Dagny was now 23 years old.

Pit stop with benefits
Before arriving in China, Dagny had to stop for some missionary education in London. Here, she got better at English, learned about the mission, met other missionaries, and prepared for a very tough and arduous life in a distant land. It was also in London that Dagny first met Robert, the man she would marry. They would keep in touch and Robert would later send Dagny a letter asking for her hand in marriage. I have previously written about their love story here and here.

After some time in London, Dagny set out on her life changing journey across the seas to China. She has not written so much about the actual journey, but she has shared her thoughts upon arrival at the port in Shanghai.

“The passengers on the large ocean liner had their eyes fixed on land. Some missionaries standing together were completely still. Prayers were sent up from the depths of their hearts that they would become a blessing to the people to whom God had sent them. We followed everything happening in the port with great interest. Small houseboats passed by. A Chinese woman, surrounded by her children, shared a meal.. The food was eaten with two sticks and looked very unappetizing. ‘Will you really live, eat, and coexist with these people?’ a voice near me asked. At that moment, it became clear to me that it was not only about preaching the gospel to the Chinese but also about being willing to descend into their daily life, to live and eat with them and share the same plate. I already loved this people.”

Foodstands on a street in China

A street in Shanghai

Coming from frugal Scandinavia and a bourgeois Norwegian environment, landing among the bustling crowds of Shanghai’s port for the first time, riding in a rickshaw, and experiencing the divided Shanghai made up of different countries’ concessions must have been overwelming. In China, Dagny spent her initial time on the China Inland Missions property in Shanghai.

China Inland Mission in Shanghai

The mission houses were a large complex, enclosing a vast courtyard with lawns and a small pavilion. From here, the new missionaries would receive word on whether they would be sent directly into the field or if they would first spend time learning the language at the language school in Yangzhou, northwest of Shanghai. At the China Inland Mission, Dagny and the other missionaries were welcomed by Hudson Taylor.

“Hudson Taylor’s fatherly heart made us feel that each of us possessed his love and interest. ‘Now it’s a matter of becoming as Chinese as possible, wearing their kind of clothes, which is necessary inland. It was quite cheerful because the clothes were often mistakenly put on backwards. In our youthful enthusiasm, we completely forgot Hudson Taylor, who lived below us and needed it to be quiet. However, he understood us and tolerated our noise. Wearing our new attire with a hat resembling a fisherman’s bucket hat, we were taken aboard the boat that would carry us to Chinkiang.”

As it happened, Robert was the appointed missionary who would escort Dagny and four other women missionaries during this part of the journey (as previously described). On the boat inland, Dagny began to eat with chopsticks.

“The food was not to our liking, especially the old preserved eggs, with their hard yellow yolks and stiff, yellow-brown, jelly-like whites.”

But not eating was not an option. Dagny was told that to learn the language, she had to be able to eat the Chinese food: “If food could help us with the language, then whatever the cost – it had to go down, even if slowly”, she wrote.

River boats in China

Travelling narrow canals

“From Chinkiang up to Yangzhou, we traveled in a small boat pulled by men walking on the shore and holding ropes attached to the boat. It was a fun journey. We were then carried through the streets in litters. What a commotion everywhere with adults, children, dogs, pigs, and chickens! That’s how I came to the language school home for female missionaries. It was an unparalleled welcome. With us newcomers, there were forty-two young missionaries there. Among them was a friend of my parents, a missionary from Norway. When I met him, I couldn’t hold back my tears.”

Dagny did miss her family and friends in Norway a lot. In spite of this, she carried on, her heart set on delivering on her promise to save Chinese souls.

The Yangzhou language school

Learning Chinese
At the language school, Dagny had a Chinese-speaking and an English-speaking teacher. After eight months, it was deemed sufficient for her to start real missionary work.

Dagny’s first placement was at one of CIM’s very basic stations in Ningguo in the Anhui province. There were no stoves, and only two rooms had heaters. Dagny and another Norwegian missionary lived in a room without a heater and woke up to ice in the washbasin in the morning. To stay warm, Dagny walked back and forth in the snow when the sun was shining and studied Chinese characters. It would still be some time before Dagny could begin her real missionary work – she needed to become more fluent in Chinese. Otherwise, it would be difficult to go on house visits and hold Bible classes or missionary meetings in the villages. You can read more about the set-up at the language school here. Bear in mind, that the schedule for women was not as ardous as that for men.

In spite of all the difficulties breaking language barriers, being a woman in a patriarchal world and struggling with various health issues, Dagny managed to deliver on her promise. She found strength in all the souls she turned around, and her words about loving the Chinese people were true even though she was often subjected to gruesome robberies, seeing her children get beaten up and loosing many friends to the violence surging through China at the time. She stayed in China for 37 years, and never regretted any of it. Her inner strength persevered and when she passed, she had turned 90 years old.

Dagny in Sweden with her son, my grandfather Rudolf

Dagny’s funeral in Duvbo church, 1959

*Hudson Taylor was a British Baptist Christian missionary to China who also founded the China Inland Mission.